MetroAccess, Metro’s federally mandated pickup and drop-off service for the disabled, has exploded in popularity, taxing the already cash-strapped agency and sending the service’s on-time performance to a year-and-a-half low at the end of last year.
“We have an aging population, so we have more people who are desirous of this type of service,” board member Gordon Linton said at a committee meeting last week. “This is a service that is unfunded and that continues to rise, and will continue to cause problems in our budget.”
About 5,000 people use MetroAccess every weekday, phoning in their request at least a day in advance and meeting the driver at the curb at the scheduled time. The fare for a trip less than three miles is $2.50, and was not raised with bus and rail fares this month.
MetroAccess ridership increased between 15 and 20 percent in 2007, far more than the agency anticipated, and is projected to growby the same amount this year, General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. said.
The agency’s 341 MetroAccess cars and vans often can’t meet the demand, forcing contractor MV Transportation, which operates the vehicles, to subcontract taxis.
Taxis are less reliable, Metro officials said, which is one reason on-time service — defined as making a pickup within 15 minutes before or after the scheduled time — has dropped.
After a bumpy start in early 2006, MV Transportation quickly brought on-time service close to or above the agency’s goal of 93.5 percent and kept it there, before seeing it fall to 90.5 percent last October and November, as demand grew.
“We became, unfortunately, victims of our own success,” said Christian Kent, Metro’s assistant general manager of access services.
Catoe pledged to bring performance rates up in every one of the next few months, telling committee members: “From this point on, it is a measure that I’m personally responsible for to this board.”
The agency will add 65 more MetroAccess cars to its fleet this spring, and Catoe has proposed $4 million for service improvements in the 2009 fiscal year budget. Metro budgeted $62 million for the service for the 2008 fiscal year, $10 million more than in 2007.
